Understanding Human

Consciousness:
A Physiological Approach
What is Physiology?
• Physiology is the branch of biology relating to the function of organs and
organ systems, and how they work within the body to respond to
challenges.
• It covers life from the single cell, where it overlaps with biochemistry and
molecular biology, through questions about how individual organs work
(e.g. heart, lungs, kidneys) right up to the whole-organism level, where
physiologists tackle questions about hormonal influences on behavior and
the function of the brain.
• Physiology therefore has something to say about every aspect of life: our
integrated approach makes physiologists invaluable contributors in studies
ranging from genetics to psychology.
• Neuroscience is a branch of physiology, and this very important
subdiscipline is covered within the Physiology of Organisms course.
In its applied aspects,
• Physiology deals with the function and malfunction of
parts of the human body with reference to health and
disease (areas relating to medicine), how to improve
crop yield (areas relating to plant sciences) as well as
the practical problems of animal, plant and microbial
performance and their responses to challenging
conditions (areas relating to ecology).
The Nervous System
Within our bodies the nervous system
plays a central role, receiving information
from the sensory organs and controlling
the movements of the muscles.

• But what role does the mind play?

• Does it control the nervous system?
• Is it a part of the nervous system?
• Is it physical and tangible, like the rest of
the body, or is it a spirit that will always
remain hidden?
mind–body question
• Philosophers have been trying to answer it for many
centuries, and more recently scientists have taken up the
task.
• Basically, people have followed two different approaches:
dualism and monism.
• Dualism is a belief in the dual nature of reality. Mind and
body are separate; the body is made of ordinary matter, but
the mind is not.
• Monism is a belief that everything in the universe consists of
matter and energy and that the mind is a phenomenon
produced by the workings of the nervous system.
Understanding Human Consciousness:
• The term consciousness can be used to refer to a variety of
concepts, including simple wakefulness.
• Thus, a researcher may write about an experiment using
“conscious rats,” referring to the fact that the rats were
awake and not anesthetized.
• However, in this context I am using the word consciousness
to refer to the fact that we humans are aware of—and can
tell others about—our thoughts, perceptions, memories, and
feelings
Understanding Human Consciousness:
• We know that consciousness can be altered by changes in the structure or
chemistry of the brain; therefore, we may hypothesize that consciousness is a
physiological function, just like behavior.
• We can even speculate about the origins of this self-awareness. Consciousness
and the ability to communicate seem to go hand in hand.
• Our species, with its complex social structure and enormous capacity for
learning, is well served by our ability to communicate: to express intentions to
one another and to make requests of one another.
• Verbal communication makes cooperation possible and permits us to establish
customs and laws of behavior.
• Perhaps the evolution of this ability is what has given rise to the phenomenon
of consciousness. That is, our ability to send and receive messages with other
people enables us to send and receive our own messages inside our own
heads—in other words, to think and to be aware of our own existence.
Blindsight
• Several phenomena involving the human brain provide insights into
the nature of consciousness.
• One of these phenomena, caused by damage to a particular part of
the brain, is known as blindsight (Weiskrantz et al., 1974; Cowey,
2010).
• The symptoms of blindsight indicate that the common belief that
perceptions must enter consciousness to affect our behavior is
incorrect.
• Our behavior can be guided by sensory information of which we are
completely unaware.
Blindsight
• As Dr. M. explained to Natalie afterward, the human brain contains not one
but several mechanisms involved in vision.
• To simplify matters somewhat, let’s consider two systems, which evolved
at different times.
• The more primitive one, which resembles the visual system of animals such
as fish and frogs, evolved first.
• The more complex one, which is possessed by mammals, evolved later.
• This second, “mammalian” system seems to be the one that is responsible
for our ability to perceive the world around us.
• The first, “primitive,” visual system is devoted mainly to controlling eye
movements and bringing our attention to sudden movements that occur
off to the side of our field of vision
Split Brains
• Studies of humans who have undergone a particular surgical
procedure demonstrate dramatically how disconnecting
parts of the brain involved with perceptions from parts that
are involved with verbal behavior also disconnects them
from consciousness.
• These results suggest that the parts of the brain involved in
verbal behavior may be the ones responsible for
consciousness
Split Brain
• The surgical procedure is one that has been used for
people with very severe epilepsy that cannot be
controlled by drugs. In these people, nerve cells in one
side of the brain become uncontrollably overactive,
and the overactivity is transmitted to the other side of
the brain by the corpus callosum.
• The corpus callosum (“tough body”) is a large bundle
of nerve fibers that connect corresponding parts of
one side of the brain with those of the other. Both
sides of the brain then engage in wild activity and
stimulate each other, causing a generalized epileptic
seizure.
• These seizures can occur many times each day,
preventing the patient from leading a normal life.
Neurosurgeons discovered that cutting the corpus
callosum (the split-brain operation) greatly reduced
the frequency of the epileptic seizures
Split Brain
• Sperry (1966) and Gazzaniga and his associates (Gazzaniga and
LeDoux, 1978; Gazzaniga, 2005) have studied these patients
extensively.
• The largest part of the brain consists of two symmetrical parts, called
the cerebral hemispheres, which receive sensory information from
the opposite sides of the body.
• They also control movements of the opposite sides. The corpus
callosum permits the two hemispheres to share information so that
each side knows what the other side is perceiving and doing.
Split Brain
• After the split-brain operation is performed, the two hemispheres are
disconnected and operate independently; their sensory mechanisms,
memories, and motor systems can no longer exchange information.
• You might think that disconnecting the brain hemispheres would be
devastating, but the effects of these disconnections are not obvious to the
casual observer.
• The simple reason for this fact is that only one hemisphere—in most
people, the left—controls speech. The right hemisphere of an epileptic
person with a split brain appears able to understand instructions
reasonably well, but it is totally incapable of producing speech.
Unilateral Neglect
• When people with unilateral
neglect attempt to draw simple
objects, they demonstrate their
unawareness of the left half of
things by drawing only the features
that appear on the right.
• Unilateral (“one-sided”) neglect is
produced by damage to a
particular part of the right side of
the brain: the cortex of the parietal
lobe.
Unilateral Neglect
• The parietal lobe receives information
directly from the skin, the muscles, the
joints, the internal organs, and the part of
the inner ear that is concerned with
balance.
• Thus, it is concerned with the body and its
position.
• But that is not all; the parietal cortex also
receives auditory and visual information. Its
most important function seems to be to put
together information about the movements
and location of the parts of the body with
the locations of objects in space around us.
This information makes it possible for us to
each for and manipulate objects and to
orient ourselves in space.
Perception of Self
• Although neglect of the left side of one’s own body can be studied only in people
with brain abnormalities, an interesting phenomenon seen in people with
undamaged brains confirms the importance of the parietal lobe (and another
region of the brain) in feelings of body ownership.
• Ehrsson, Spence, and Passingham (2004) studied the rubber hand illusion. Normal
subjects were positioned with their left hand hidden out of sight. They saw a
lifelike rubber left hand in front of them. The experimenters stroked both the
subject’s hidden left hand and the visible rubber hand with a small paintbrush. If
the two hands were stroked synchronously and in the same direction, the
subjects began to experience the rubber hand as their own. In fact, if they were
then asked to use their right hand to point to their left hand, they tended to point
toward the rubber hand. However, if the real and artificial hands were stroked in
different directions or at different times, the subjects did not experience the
rubber hand as their own.
The Rubber Hand Illusion
• If the subject’s hidden left hand and the
visible rubber hand are stroked
synchronously in the same direction,
the subject will come to experience the
artificial hand as his or her own. If the
hands are stroked asynchronously or in
different directions, this illusion will not
occur.
The Nature of Behavioral Neuroscience
• Behavioral neuroscience was formerly known as physiological psychology
• The first textbook of psychology, written by Wilhelm Wundt in the late
nineteenth century, was titled Principles of Physiological Psychology.
• In recent years, with the explosion of information in experimental
biology, scientists from other disciplines have become prominent
contributors to the investigation of the physiology of behavior.
• The united effort of behavioral neuroscientists, physiologists, and other
neuroscientists is due to the realization that the ultimate function of the
nervous system is behavior.
The basic function of perception is to inform us of
what is happening in our environment so that our
behaviors will be adaptive and useful:
• Perception without the ability to act would be useless. Of course, once
perceptual abilities have evolved, they can be used for purposes other than
guiding behavior.
• For example, we can enjoy a beautiful sunset or a great work of art without
the perception causing us to do anything in particular. And thinking can
often take place without causing any overt behavior. However, the ability to
think evolved because it permits us to perform complex behaviors that
accomplish useful goals. And whereas reminiscing about things that
happened in our past can be an enjoyable pastime, the ability to learn and
remember evolved—again—because it permitted our ancestors to profit
from experience and perform behaviors that were useful to them
The Goals of Research
• The goal of all scientists is to explain the phenomena they study. But what
do we mean by explain? Scientific explanation takes two forms:
generalization and reduction.
• All scientists deal with generalization. For example, psychologists explain
particular instances of behavior as examples of general laws, which they
deduce from their experiments. For instance, most psychologists would
explain a pathologically strong fear of dogs as an example of a particular
form of learning called classical conditioning.
• Presumably, the person was frightened earlier in life by a dog. An
unpleasant stimulus was paired with the sight of the animal (perhaps the
person was knocked down by an exuberant dog or was attacked by a
vicious one), and the subsequent sight of dogs evokes the earlier response:
fear.
The Goals of Research
• Most physiologists use an additional approach to explanation:
• reduction. They explain complex phenomena in terms of simpler ones.
• For example, they may explain the movement of a muscle in terms of the
changes in the membranes of muscle cells, the entry of particular
chemicals, and the interactions among protein molecules within these
cells.
• By contrast, a molecular biologist would explain these events in terms of
forces that bind various molecules together and cause various parts of the
molecules to be attracted to one another.
• In turn, the job of an atomic physicist is to describe matter and energy
themselves and to account for the various forces found in nature.
Practitioners of each branch of science use reduction to call on sets of
more elementary generalizations to explain the phenomena they study.
The Goals of Research
• The task of the behavioral neuroscientist is to explain behavior by
studying the physiological processes that control it. But behavioral
neuroscientists cannot simply be reductionists. It is not enough to
observe behaviors and correlate them with physiological events that
occur at the same time.
• Identical behaviors may occur for different reasons and thus may be
initiated by different physiological mechanisms. Therefore, we must
understand “psychologically” why a particular behavior occurs—that
is, what functions it performs—before we can understand what
physiological events made it occur.
• E.g. Mice
Biological Roots of Behavioral Neuroscience
• Study of (or speculations about) the physiology of behavior has its
roots in antiquity. Because its movement was necessary for life and
because emotions caused it to beat more strongly, many ancient
cultures, including the Egyptian, Indian, and Chinese cultures,
considered the heart to be the seat of thought and emotions. The
ancient Greeks did too, but Hippocrates (460–370 b.c.e.) concluded
that this role should be assigned to the brain.
Biological Roots of Behavioral Neuroscience
• Not all ancient Greek scholars agreed with Hippocrates. Aristotle did
not; he thought the brain served to cool the passions of the heart.
But Galen (130–200 c.e.), who had the greatest respect for Aristotle,
concluded that Aristotle’s role for the brain was “utterly absurd, since
in that case Nature would not have placed the encephalon [brain] so
far from the heart,… and she would not have attached the sources of
all the senses [the sensory nerves] to it” (Galen, 1968 translation, p.
387). Galen thought enough of the brain to dissect and study the
brains of cattle, sheep, pigs, cats, dogs, weasels, monkeys, and apes
(Finger, 1994).
Biological Roots of Behavioral Neuroscience
• René Descartes, a seventeenth-century French philosopher and
mathematician, has been called the father of modern philosophy.
• Although he was not a biologist, his speculations concerning the roles
of the mind and brain in the control of behavior provide a good
starting point in the modern history of behavioral neuroscience.
• Descartes assumed that the world was a purely mechanical entity
that, once having been set in motion by God, ran its course without
divine interference
• Thus, to understand the world, one had only to understand how it
was constructed.
Biological Roots of Behavioral Neuroscience
• René Descartes, a seventeenth-century French philosopher and
mathematician, has been called the father of modern philosophy.
• Although he was not a biologist, his speculations concerning the roles
of the mind and brain in the control of behavior provide a good
starting point in the modern history of behavioral neuroscience.
• Descartes assumed that the world was a purely mechanical entity
that, once having been set in motion by God, ran its course without
divine interference
• Thus, to understand the world, one had only to understand how it
was constructed.
Biological Roots of Behavioral Neuroscience
• Descartes, animals were mechanical devices; their behavior was controlled
by environmental stimuli. His view of the human body was much the same:
It was a machine.
• As Descartes observed, some movements of the human body were
automatic and involuntary. For example, if a person’s finger touched a hot
object, the arm would immediately withdraw from the source of
stimulation.
• Reactions like this did not require participation of the mind; they occurred
automatically. Descartes called these actions reflexes (from the Latin
reflectere, “to bend back upon itself”). Energy coming from the outside
source would be reflected back through the nervous system to the
muscles, which would contract. The term is still in use today, but, of course,
we explain the operation of a reflex differently.
Biological Roots of Behavioral Neuroscience
• Like most philosophers of his time, Descartes was a dualist; he
believed that each person possessed a mind—a uniquely human
attribute that was not subject to the laws of the universe.
• But his thinking differed from that of his predecessors in one
important way: He was the first to suggest that a link exists between
the human mind and its purely physical housing, the brain.
• He believed that the mind controlled the movements of the body,
while the body, through its sense organs, supplied the mind with
information about what was happening in the environment.
Biological Roots of Behavioral Neuroscience
• In particular, he hypothesized that this
interaction took place in the pineal
body, a small organ situated on top of
the brain stem, buried beneath the
cerebral hemispheres. He noted that
the brain contained hollow chambers
(the ventricles) that were filled with
fluid, and he hypothesized that this
fluid was under pressure. When the
mind decided to perform an action, it
tilted the pineal body in a particular
direction like a little joystick, causing
fluid to flow from the brain into the
appropriate set of nerves. This flow of
fluid caused the same muscles to inflate
and move.
Biological Roots of Behavioral Neuroscience
• In science a model is a relatively simple system that works on known
principles and is able to do at least some of the things that a more
complex system can do. For example, when scientists discovered that
elements of the nervous system communicate by means of electrical
impulses, researchers developed models of the brain based on
telephone switchboards and, more recently, computers. Abstract
models, which are completely mathematical in their properties, have
also been developed.
Biological Roots of Behavioral Neuroscience
• One of the most important figures in the
development of experimental physiology was
Johannes Müller, a nineteenth-century
German physiologist.
• Müller was a forceful advocate of the
application of experimental techniques to
physiology. Previously, the activities of most
natural scientists had been limited to
observation and classification.
• Although these activities are essential, Müller
insisted that major advances in our
understanding of the workings of the body
would be achieved only by experimentally
removing or isolating animals’ organs, testing
their responses to various chemicals, and
otherwise altering the environment to see
how the organs responded.
Biological Roots of Behavioral Neuroscience
• His most important contribution to the
study of the physiology of behavior
was his doctrine of specific nerve
energies.
• Müller observed that although all
nerves carry the same basic message—
an electrical impulse—we perceive the
messages of different nerves in
different ways.
• For example, messages carried by the
optic nerves produce sensations of
visual images, and those carried by the
auditory nerves produce sensations of
sounds.
Biological Roots of Behavioral Neuroscience
• How can different sensations arise
from the same basic message?
• The answer is that the messages
occur in different channels. The
portion of the brain that receives
messages from the optic nerves
interprets the activity as visual
stimulation, even if the nerves are
actually stimulated mechanically.
Biological Roots of Behavioral Neuroscience
• Müller’s advocacy of experimentation and the logical deductions from his
doctrine of specific nerve energies set the stage for performing experiments
directly on the brain.
• Indeed, Pierre Flourens, a nineteenth-century French physiologist, did just that.
Flourens removed various parts of animals’ brains and observed their behavior.
• By seeing what the animal could no longer do, he could infer the function of the
missing portion of the brain. This method is called experimental ablation (from
the Latin ablatus, “carried away”). Flourens claimed to have discovered the
regions of the brain that control heart rate and breathing, purposeful
movements, and visual and auditory reflexes.
Biological Roots of Behavioral Neuroscience
• Soon after Flourens performed his
experiments, Paul Broca, a French surgeon,
applied the principle of experimental ablation
to the human brain. Of course, he did not
intentionally remove parts of human brains to
see how they worked but observed the
behavior of people whose brains had been
damaged by strokes.
• In 1861 he performed an autopsy on the brain
of a man who had had a stroke that resulted
in the loss of the ability to speak. Broca’s
observations led him to conclude that a
portion of the cerebral cortex on the front
part of the left side of the brain performs
functions that are necessary for speech.
Biological Roots of Behavioral Neuroscience
• Indeed, speech requires many
different functions, which are
organized throughout the brain.
• Nonetheless, the method of
experimental ablation remains
important to our understanding of
the brains of both humans and
laboratory animals
Biological Roots of Behavioral Neuroscience
• Luigi Galvani used electricity to demonstrate that muscles contain the source of
the energy that powers their contractions.
• In 1870, German physiologists Gustav Fritsch and Eduard Hitzig used electrical
stimulation as a tool for understanding the physiology of the brain. They applied
weak electrical current to the exposed surface of a dog’s brain and observed the
effects of the stimulation.
• They found that stimulation of different portions of a specific region of the brain
caused contraction of specific muscles on the opposite side of the body. We
now refer to this region as the primary motor cortex, and we know that nerve
cells there communicate directly with those that cause muscular contractions.
We also know that other regions of the brain communicate with the primary
motor cortex and thus control behaviors.
Biological Roots of Behavioral Neuroscience
• One of the most brilliant contributors to nineteenth century science was the
German physicist and physiologist Hermann von Helmholtz.
• Helmholtz devised a mathematical formulation of the law of conservation of
energy; invented the ophthalmoscope (used to examine the retina of the eye);
devised an important and influential theory of color vision and color blindness;
and studied audition, music, and many physiological processes.
• Helmholtz was also the first scientist to attempt to measure the speed of
conduction through nerves. Scientists had previously believed that such
conduction was identical to the conduction that occurs in wires, traveling at
approximately the speed of light. But Helmholtz found that neural conduction
was much slower— only about 90 feet per second.
Natural Selection and Evolution:
Functionalism and the Inheritance of Traits
• Darwin’s theory emphasized that all of an organism’s characteristics—its
structure, its coloration, its behavior—have functional significance.
• Darwin’s theory gave rise to functionalism, a belief that characteristics of
living organisms perform useful functions.
• To understand the workings of a complex piece of machinery, we should
know what its functions are.
• This principle is just as true for a living organism as it is for a mechanical
device.
 An important difference exists between
machines and organisms:
• Machines have inventors who
had a purpose when they
designed them, whereas
organisms are the result of a
long series of accidents. Thus,
strictly speaking, we cannot
say that any physiological
mechanisms of living
organisms have a purpose. But
they do have functions, and
these we can try to determine.
For example, the forelimbs
shown in Figure 1.12 are
adapted for different uses in
different species of mammals
Natural Selection and Evolution:
Functionalism and the Inheritance of Traits
• Darwin formulated his theory of evolution to explain the means by
which species acquired their adaptive characteristics. The
cornerstone of this theory is the principle of natural selection.
• Darwin noted that members of a species were not all identical and
that some of the differences they exhibited were inherited by their
offspring. If an individual’s characteristics permit it to reproduce more
successfully, some of the individual’s offspring will inherit the
favorable characteristics and will themselves produce more offspring.
Natural Selection and Evolution:
Functionalism and the Inheritance of Traits
• As a result, the characteristics will become more prevalent in that
species. He observed that animal breeders were able to develop
strains that possessed particular traits by mating together only
animals that possessed the desired traits.
• If artificial selection, controlled by animal breeders, could produce so
many varieties of dogs, cats, and livestock, perhaps natural selection
could be responsible for the development of species.
• Of course, it was the natural environment, not the hand of the animal
breeder, that shaped the process of evolution.
Natural Selection and Evolution:
Functionalism and the Inheritance of Traits
• The plans do get altered; mutations occur from time to time.
Mutations are accidental changes in the chromosomes of sperm or
eggs that join together and develop into new organisms.
• For example, cosmic radiation might strike a chromosome in a cell of
an animal’s testis or ovary, thus producing a mutation that affects that
animal’s offspring. Most mutations are deleterious; the offspring
either fails to survive or survives with some sort of defect.
Natural Selection and Evolution:
Functionalism and the Inheritance of Traits
• However, a small percentage of mutations are beneficial and confer a
selective advantage to the organism that possesses them. That is, the
animal is more likely than other members of its species to live long
enough to reproduce and hence to pass on its chromosomes to its
own offspring.
• Many different kinds of traits can confer a selective advantage:
resistance to a particular disease, the ability to digest new kinds of
food, more effective weapons for defense or for procurement of prey,
and even a more attractive appearance to members of the other sex
(after all, one must reproduce to pass on one’s chromosomes).
Evolution of the Human Species
• To evolve means to develop gradually (from the Latin evolvere, “to
unroll”).
• The process of evolution is a gradual change in the structure and
physiology of plant and animal species as a result of natural selection.
• New species evolve when organisms develop novel characteristics
that can take advantage of unexploited opportunities in the
environment
Evolution of the
Human Species
Evolution of Large Brains
• Humans possessed several characteristics that enabled them to compete
with other species.
• Their agile hands enabled them to make and use tools.
• Their excellent color vision helped them to spot ripe fruit, game animals,
and dangerous predators.
• Their mastery of fire enabled them to cook food, provide warmth, and
frighten nocturnal predators.
• Their upright posture and bipedalism made it possible for them to walk
long distances efficiently, with their eyes far enough from the ground to
see long distances across the plains.
Evolution of Large Brains
• A large brain requires a large skull, and an upright posture limits the
size of a woman’s birth canal.
• A newborn baby’s head is about as large as it can safely be. As it is,
the birth of a baby is much more arduous than the birth of mammals
with proportionally smaller heads, including those of our closest
primate relatives.
• Because a baby’s brain is not large or complex enough to perform the
physical and intellectual abilities of an adult, the brain must continue
to grow after the baby is born.
How does the human brain compare with the
brains of other animals?
• In absolute size, our brains are dwarfed by those of elephants or whales.
However, we might expect such large animals to have large brains to match
their large bodies.
• Indeed, the human brain makes up 2.3 percent of our total body weight,
while the elephant brain makes up only 0.2 percent of the animal’s total
body weight, which makes our brains seem very large in comparison.
• However, the shrew, which weighs only 7.5 g, has a brain that weighs 0.25
g, or 3.3 percent of its total body weight. Certainly, the shrew brain is much
less complex than the human brain, so something is wrong with this
comparison.